ABSTRACT
The last months of the war were of painful agony for the Republic. Chapter 9 takes the reader from the scenarios of the Republican retreat in the Pyrenees and the refugee camps of southern France to the last trenches of the war. Excavations by my team in both Republican and Nationalist positions dated from late 1938 to early 1939 furnish a moving image of the wildly differing experiences of soldiers combatting in the Nationalist and Republican armies. The poverty of the Republic is painfully obvious in the trenches of Madrid, Jarama and Guadalajara, as is the overabundance of material resources of the Nationalists. These differences are particularly clear in the kind and amount of food that combatants had at their disposal, in the different patterns and rates of recycling in both armies and in the medicines they were consuming. Our team also had the chance to excavate one of the last attacks of the Popular Army, which was launched in January, 1939. It took place in Brunete, 30 km away from Madrid and the scenario of a legendary battle in 1937. The war landscape had changed dramatically since 1937: it was by then heavily fortified with concrete pillboxes and this sealed the fate of the Republicans. The war finished two months later, with the surrender of Madrid to the Nationalists—but not before a last, failed Nationalist attack on the capital. We were able to find the exact place where the surrender took place and discovered many remains related to the last day of the conflict.
